Mary Berry Cooks: Grandmother’s Best Gravy Tip

I do enjoy watching TV cookery programmes and one that’s running at the moment is Mary Berry Cooks. Mary Berry, 80, is most recently best known for being one of the judges on the Great British Bake Off. Before this, Mary Berry had an entire lifetime’s career in cooking, TV programmes and writing cookery books, including being the author of one of the UK’s well known cookery books from the 1970s The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook.

On the episode of “Mary Berry Cooks” that I watched, Mary shared with the viewers a glimpse into her family past and childhood memories.

Mary Berry’s Roast Saddle of Lamb needed gravy and as she made her gravy Mary said that her mother used to add gravy browning to gravy to give it a nice dark colour. She then went on to describe her grandmother’s perfect gravy tip, as told to Mary by her own mother…. I hope you kept up with that!

Mary Berry’s Grandmother would take a large serving spoon and put some sugar in it – she’d then hold it over the flames in the fire grate until the sugar had melted and caramelised. Adding this spoon of caramelised sugar into her gravy made her gravy brown!

It was a fascinating glimpse into the old ways – Mary herself is 80, her mother lived to be 105 and her grandmother would have been making gravy at the turn of the century in 1900.